An electronic trading system includes an electronic matching system for tradeable items, such as stocks, options, and commodities. The electronic trading system often includes an electronic exchange to perform order matching. The electronic exchange also provides, among other things, market data and trade confirmation data to subscribing trading devices. By way of illustration, an electronic exchange in derivatives trading is the CME® Globex® electronic trading platform, which is offered by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group; though the inventions described herein are not limited to derivatives trading.
To trade in an electronic trading system, a person (commonly a trader) uses a trading device to receive and electronically process data from the electronic exchange. The trading device generally outputs the data to the person via one or more display screens. The person may also interact with the computer and the data using an input device, such as a mouse or keyboard or both. For example, the person may place orders, modify orders, and delete orders at the electronic exchange using the trading device. Depending on how a trading device is configured, trading with it may require a great deal of the person's attention (e.g., as in manual style trading), require very little or no attention (e.g., as in automated style trading), or somewhere in between.
There are numerous tools currently available that can assist in trading. For example, there are a number of different charts that can be used to illustrate movement in the price of a tradeable object over time. There are a number of overlays that can be superimposed over a chart, for example, resistance, support, trend line, moving average, Bollinger bands, and so on. There are a number of price based indicators and volume based indicators that can be shown along with the other tools. In fact, much time and money have been spent on the tools available today, which many people consider useful for analysis.
Yet, the currently available tool set is still inadequate. That is, for example, some kinds of information like implied trading information, which could be useful to certain traders, are not made available to them. In another example, a number of different tools, where each tool offers a different kind of information, might have to be used collectively to properly analyze a market. Forcing the trader to use a variety of different tools may be cause for unnecessary distraction, which is especially problematic in fast moving markets or when implementing sophisticated trading strategies, for example.